Leaked: ATI Radeon HD 6990 specifications

Legendle2007 said:
I don't think Nvidia was ever out of the game.... the HD 5000 series was good but they were only able to match Nvidia's level. For the most part, Nvidia has been winning the GPU war.

jurassic4096 said:
People also seem to forget that nVIDIA's CUDA cores are actually used by professionals, end users, scientists, servers, and video and picture editors. Also PhysX, great SLi scaling, etc.

AMD has Eyefinity (a fad), and Crossfire. Havok physics is software driven (owned by Intel), and time after time, new Catalyst driver releases offer very very very little in adding performance. AMD's GPU's and CPU's are cheaper because they have no choice. Why do you think the lesser known brands at your supermarket are cheaper than the big brands? Why would it be any different with silicon?

Jensen said it himself BEFORE Fermi was out... "There is no safety net at nVIDIA."

AKA, go big or go home. AMD has yet to get to get off the couch if you ask me.

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Hows the benefit package over there at Nvidia? These are some seriously ignorant comments

If you actually think about it, the whole 'Nvidia holding back their dual gpu card waiting for Antilles' is pretty silly. The 480 was a power management/performance failure and your competitor has moved 20million+ DX11 gpu parts in comparison to what ? You had nothing to answer the 5970 and a moderately successful upper mid range part in the 460. Now with the chance to stamp your name on dual gpu board performance, you say 'nah, we'll wait and see what AMD does'. That sounds like fear and doubt in the performance of your own product.

@Regenweald
I think I speak for most tech enthusiasts when I say PLEASE p*ss off back to troll-land. We already have our quota of mush-brained regurgitated fanboi-speak. Besides I hear Charlie's proctology exam only needs your nose to begin commencement...please don't keep him waiting...and take jurassic4096 with you.
Maybe, with two hemispheres of brain available, your combined efforts will result in a posting thats not fatuous, unoriginal and actually adds something to the discussion.

LOL divide, I didn't realize you were so emotional over this stuff.... but you still get an a for effort, creativity and ... colourfulness. As for tech enthusiast, A true one would look at all aspects of a product and in the case of a GPU, more than fps before worshiping a product. In the case of the entire Fermi generation, performance has not been proportional to the sheer power demands of the cards. But hey, what would the internets be without an insult or two on a comment board eh ?

As for tech enthusiast, A true one would look at all aspects of a product and in the case of a GPU...

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A true tech enthusiast would see that the thread is about the HD 6990.
A true tech enthusiast would likely post regarding possible performance of said card.
A true tech enthusiast might speculate on it's design and feature set
A true tech enthusiast might also speculate on it's introduction date and pricing.

A troll will use the thread to blather on about another companys products

Nvidia is rumored to be delaying its dual-GPU GTX 590 in order to implement further improvements so that it can once again beat AMD's offering (Nvidia currently holds the crown for single-GPU performance with its GeForce GTX 580)

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regenweald said:
If you actually think about it, the whole 'Nvidia holding back their dual gpu card waiting for Antilles' is pretty silly. The 480 was a power management/performance failure and your competitor has moved 20million+ DX11 gpu parts in comparison to what ? You had nothing to answer the 5970 and a moderately successful upper mid range part in the 460. Now with the chance to stamp your name on dual gpu board performance, you say 'nah, we'll wait and see what AMD does'. That sounds like fear and doubt in the performance of your own product.

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I guess since you put QED at the end of this one.....I admit....defeat ? it's late, enough with this now, you win.....

@Regenweald
Sweet....the article mentions the GTX 580 and 590 (?) as a parting thought/aside in an article about the HD 6990, so that warrants some rambling about how crappy the GTX 480 is, and how fantastic the HD 5970 is, and some faint praise for the 460....in fact, your posting doesn't include one word about either the HD 6990 or upcoming (?) nvidia card.

So basically it's nvidia bashing using only a tangentially connected product...much the same as employed by the green-tinged mouth-breathers when they wax lyrical about the late, hot and underperforming R600.

Note: If using quotes it's probably best if these quotes somehow help your argument

The Cray Jaguar supercomputer runs on AMD processing units and could run a lot faster and more efficiently if it used AMD GPU's as well. China's supercomputer may be faster but it cannot sustain speeds for very long.

The Cray Jaguar supercomputer runs on AMD processing units and could run a lot faster and more efficiently if it used AMD GPU's as well.

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IF ? WTF is IF ? Daydreaming 101.
The XT5 isn't configured for using GPGPU....big pity really since 37,376 Opteron 2435's obviously isn't the way forward at a guess.
What does a near-obsolete six-core CPU has to do with a graphics card discussion ?

China's supercomputer may be faster but it cannot sustain speeds for very long.

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Of course, thats why they built it...the local toy shop was out of Meccano.
The Tiahne-1A is so obviously lacking in performance that the U.S. Dept. of Defense has made Intel and nvidia prime contractors, along with MIT and Sandia for a Xeon/nvidia GPGPU SC....best you contact all of them and tell them they're doing it wrong.

Originally Posted by Guest View Post
The Cray Jaguar supercomputer runs on AMD processing units and could run a lot faster and more efficiently if it used AMD GPU's as well.

Click to expand...

IF ? WTF is IF ? Daydreaming 101.
The XT5 isn't configured for using GPGPU....big pity really since 37,376 Opteron 2435's obviously isn't the way forward at a guess.
What does a near-obsolete six-core CPU has to do with a graphics card discussion ?

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:haha:, I keep tellin ya Chef, there should be a quote hall of fame/shame...holy mackerel

jurassic4096 said:
People also seem to forget that nVIDIA's CUDA cores are actually used by professionals, end users, scientists, servers, and video and picture editors. Also PhysX, great SLi scaling, etc.

AMD has Eyefinity (a fad), and Crossfire. Havok physics is software driven (owned by Intel), and time after time, new Catalyst driver releases offer very very very little in adding performance. AMD's GPU's and CPU's are cheaper because they have no choice. Why do you think the lesser known brands at your supermarket are cheaper than the big brands? Why would it be any different with silicon?

Jensen said it himself BEFORE Fermi was out... "There is no safety net at nVIDIA."

AKA, go big or go home. AMD has yet to get to get off the couch if you ask me.

Click to expand...

Yeah because the GTX 480 was such a success and the HD 5870 was a giant fail. OH WAIT IT'S THE OTHER WAY AROUND! Also the thing you brought up about the drivers just isn't true anymore and Crossfire scaling is nearly on par with SLI.

People also seem to forget that nVIDIA's CUDA cores are actually used by professionals, end users, scientists, servers, and video and picture editors. Also PhysX, great SLi scaling, etc.

AMD has Eyefinity (a fad), and Crossfire. Havok physics is software driven (owned by Intel), and time after time, new Catalyst driver releases offer very very very little in adding performance. AMD's GPU's and CPU's are cheaper because they have no choice. Why do you think the lesser known brands at your supermarket are cheaper than the big brands? Why would it be any different with silicon?

Jensen said it himself BEFORE Fermi was out... "There is no safety net at nVIDIA."

AKA, go big or go home. AMD has yet to get to get off the couch if you ask me.

Click to expand...

Then i guess AMD is just like you--won't get off the couch. Luckily, nobody was asking you. When it comes to graphics cards, it's all about opinion. You might like NVIDIA, I might like AMD, my Fiancee might not even care, but it all depends on the person. I think we have to respect that everyone has there own opinions.

@Guest #44 (Eric W)
I suggest you get the card that makes you happier fapping- you seem well versed in it's application. Don't put your back out.

I'm sure you get a nice little stipend for plugging HQV, but it may have escaped your notice that the HD 6990 isn't being aimed at the HTPC market. Rest assured, if you were asking for a suitable card with which to view your .mpg girlfriend I'd most assuredly point you towards a HD5750 or similar.
Being a gaming orientated card it's probably best to focus on gaming in this case...

Leaving aside the banding/shimmering due to LoD mapping settings in the AMD driver, you'll note that ALL the sites -as well as a myriad of others who have tested- have concluded that there is virtually no difference between the image quality of either manufacturers cards.
And here, lastly, is exactly the same viewpoint expressed by one of (if not the No.1) nvidia's detractors.

Obviously the way to AMD's heart is through benchmarking in such a way as to make the amount of onboard VRAM the main differentiator...unless of course you're measuring one vendors 1Gb cards*...:suspiciou

*Note that [H] dropped one half of their review benchmarks (maximum playable settings) for this one product review.

S|A wont get a sample to review simply because there is no gain to be had for AMD. Sites like S|A, Rage3D and Beyond 3D are so unashamedly AMD-centric (check the number of AMD and Global Foundries employees that post there) that there is no cachet to be had with a preview/review. Not a hell of lot of difference from say, giving SLI Zone forums an nvidia card for the same purpose...basically you'll get a PR slanted review, and if it isn't, the suspicion of the majority of people (that are aware of these sites) will be to dismiss them on the basis of past articles. Kyle and Brent on the other hand have a reputation for, if not impartiality, then certainly a love of high-end tech (especially Eyefinity/Surround gaming in Kyle's case)- so it's all the more disappointing that they seem to be tailoring their benchmarking to fall into a company line.Hence the HD6950 2Gb v 1Gb review where the graphics results don't match the conclusion they reached.
Looking at the framerate results in the review you would be hard pressed to recommend the 2Gb version of the card over the 1Gb -something AMD I'm sure are quite keen on publicising- when a [H]'s usual max playable settings would have shown something more in line with this:http://www.techspot.com/gallery/data/500/GTX-560-92.jpg
...rather than the more friendly 4xAA setting they chose to use on this isolated occasion.

My guess is that Kyle got special dispensation for towing the company line with recent reviews and editorials. I would go so far as to guarantee that no other mainstream site has the same favoured status- that is to say I fully expect no other AMD sanctioned "previews"

yes it was.
I didn't expect Charlie to get anything anything except possibly the more specific set of architectural slides.
I am just hugely surprised to see Kyle up to this, maybe I shouldn't be, but I am.
Not to mention that it was so restricted and full of "we cant reveal....right now" it was more maddening than anything. It appeared that what they (AMD and [H]) were doing all this 'orchestrated' benching to answer charges that the thing even existed. This is rather odd considering the way they are positioning themselves as having a chance to take the single card performance crown. Possible I guess (in certain benches) with the 300w equalizer they are working with.

Seems a little odd that AMD didn't take the opportunity to "launch" the card at CeBIT, rather than what looks like at first glance, preferential treatment for one tech site- it's not as if March 1st is that far away.
I'm pretty certain that if the role was reversed (i.e. Tom's publishing some nebulous "benchmarks" of the GTX 590 for instance, or Anand getting the heads-up on a new Intel architecture) then the forums would have been aflood with charges of the site being a PR lapdog, which is precisely why (IMO) AMD are using Kyle and Brent as their unofficial mouthpiece.
Very strange timing, very strange execution. 99% PR fluff, 1% actual info -and that's being generous. One "bench" on a demo using non-DX11 features at a resolution picked to show the best side of the card.

I await with keen interest the actual reviews....and which sites get to publish them at launch.